The Criminal Law Section of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and the University of Akron School of Law will jointly sponsor a free public Town Hall Meeting on Ohio’s Death Penalty System on Tuesday, May 20 from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, located at 1801 Euclid Avenue.

The Ohio Supreme Court has approved the Town Hall Meeting for three hours of Continuing Legal Education Credit.

The Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association and the two law schools called the Town Hall Meeting in response to a study conducted by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, launched in 2001, not as an effort to abolish the death penalty but as an effort to assess its fairness and accuracy. Project members studied the penalty systems in eight states, of which Ohio was one.

The Ohio study found the death penalty in Ohio “plagued with serious problems.”

Cleveland-Marshall Associate Dean Phyllis L. Crocker chaired the Ohio study and will be one of the Town Hall speakers. Cleveland-Marshall Dean Geoffrey S. Mearns, who was a member of the Ohio study, will open the Meeting. Robin Marie Maher, Director of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project, will moderate the discussions.

Other speakers include University of Cincinnati Professor of Law Mark Godsey, Director of the Ohio Innocence Project and a member of Ohio’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project team; and David Zimmerman, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office Major Trial Unit Chief.

Topics include a review of the ABA’s Examination of Ohio's Death Penalty System, Applications of the Death Penalty in Ohio, Case Law Update and Trends in Capital Cases.

For more information on the Town Hall Meeting or to register, please contact Samantha Pringle at 216.696.3525 or springle@ClevMetroBar.org.

Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, founded in 1897 as the Cleveland Law School, was the first law school in Ohio to admit women and one of the first to admit minorities. In 1946, the Cleveland Law School merged with the John Marshall School of Law, founded in 1916, to become the Cleveland-Marshall Law School. In 1969, the Law School joined Cleveland’s new public university as its sixth college and was renamed the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law of Cleveland State University. Early graduates of the College of Law laid the foundation for the legal profession in Northeast Ohio. Now in its 111th year, Cleveland-Marshall is preparing promising students to be America’s leaders in the 21st century in law, business, nonprofit agencies and government.

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